Call for Investigator-led Research Projects under EPSRC Healthcare Technologies Theme

The Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) has released a new call for Investigator-led Research Projects under the Healthcare Technologies theme. This call intends to highlight the Theme’s long term aim of increasing the number of investigator-led projects supported by the EPSRC, as well as stimulating demand in the short term.

Priority will be given to research proposals addressing the following two areas:

Transforming community health and care using real-time information to support self-management of health and to facilitate timely interventions delivered through new models of care.

Improving prevention and public health using technologies to understand and influence behavioural and environmental determinants of health and wellbeing, and to revolutionise built infrastructures to support healthy, independent living.

All applications to the call must be closely aligned to the Healthcare Technologies strategies, and/or describe a good understanding of the pathway to impact of research in health. Proposals submitted in response to this call are also expected to describe:

High quality projects where the novel engineering and physical sciences component comprises the majority of the proposed research.

Multidisciplinary teams with the appropriate mix of skills and expertise for state of the art engineering and physical sciences research combined with a full understanding of user needs.

Links to relevant EPSRC strategies for Healthcare Technologies and how they will deliver aspects of the strategies.

An identified health need that will be addressed through the project, and how the research outcomes will lead to improved clinical practice and/or offer significant added value over current or alternative healthcare solutions.

How the proposed research and associated impact activities have been designed to support and shorten the pathway to impact in health.

All higher education institutions (HEIs) and some approved research council institutes and independent research organisations (IROs) are eligible to apply. The amount and duration of funding available is flexible, with applicants being invited to apply for projects ranging from small value, short term grants (eg for feasibility studies) to longer-term, larger awards (such as multi-institutional projects), as well as first grants, networks, networks-plus or discipline hopping.

Applications to the call must also be clearly aligned to the recently released Healthcare Technologies Grand Challenges and applicants should discuss how their proposed research will address one of them.

Potential applicants are advised to discuss their ideas with the EPSRC prior to submitting an application. While this is an open call, proposals will be batched during the course of 2017 according to three submission deadlines, before going forward to the respective Healthcare Technologies prioritisation panel. The batching dates for 2017 are:

31 January 2017

27 April 2017

27 July 2017

Any proposals submitted after the batching dates will be held until the next batching date or an appropriate capability theme panel. Further Information here